Wireless communication between electronic devices requires that devices participating in the communication, for example a base station and a mobile station, are configured to conform to an agreed framework for communication. The agreed framework comprises procedures that are used to effect the communication in the framework context, wherein the context may comprise for example air interface resources, or radio resources, such as frequency bands. Such frameworks may be known as radio access technologies, or RATs. A RAT may be defined in industry standards that device manufacturers can refer to when designing products such that they are capable of communicating according to the RAT.
When standards are used correctly, interoperability between devices from a plurality of suppliers may be achieved. For example, a cellular telephone produced by a first manufacturer may be capable of communicating with a cellular telephone produced by a second manufacturer, using a base station produced by a third manufacturer and a core network produced by a fourth manufacturer.
Radio access technologies may be designed for specific use cases in mind. For example, cellular telephony RATs may be optimized for ease of roaming, wide-area coverage and battery power efficiency. On the other hand, other RATs such as those designed for wireless hotspots for stationary users may be optimized to produce high peak datarates in the network to mobile direction.
Some wireless communication devices, such as for example cellular telephones or tablet computers, are furnished with a capability to communicate wirelessly using more than one RAT. Such devices may offer benefits of more than one RAT, but may also suffer drawbacks of more than one RAT as well. For example, keeping several RATs active may involve supplying power to a transceiver or transceivers comprising several radios. Each RAT may also be associated with a certain base processor load needed to maintain the RAT in an active state. Interworking more than one RAT in a portable device may also give rise to problems when radio transmissions of a first RAT interfere with radio reception of a second RAT, for example.
Methods to improve interoperation between RATs may include, for example, selecting non-overlapping frequency ranges for the respective RATs to avoid interference. Alternatively or in addition communications pertaining to each RAT may be sequenced so that only one RAT is active at any given time. For example, a communication device may partition time into consecutive non-overlapping timeslots and assign the timeslots to different RATs the communication device is configured to communicate in accordance with.